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Black Star, Crescent Moon

The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America

2012

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Author:

Sohail Daulatzai

Tracing the interactions between the Black radical imagination and the Muslim Third World from the 1950s to the present

Black Star, Crescent Moon offers a new perspective on the political and cultural history of Black internationalism from the 1950s to the present. Sohail Daulatzai maps the rich, shared history between Black Muslims, Black radicals, and the Muslim Third World, showing how Black artists and activists imagined themselves as part of a global majority, connected to larger communities of resistance.

Timely and provocative, this globe-trotting book takes you down an almost forgotten road of Black freedom: the one that connects the struggles of the burning ghettos of America to the rage against imperial power in Muslim lands. Shining light on the artists and activists who helped pave that road, Black Star, Crescent Moon vividly shows that Black freedom struggles, whether through art or politics, are always global in scope. Written with an urgency that our times demand, my man Sohail does what we in hip-hop have been doing for decades: uncovering histories, drawing connections, and trying to make people move. Rebel reading for right now!

“The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia,” Malcolm X declared in a 1962 speech, “is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.” Four decades later, the hip-hop artist Talib Kweli gave voice to a similar Pan-African sentiment in the song “K.O.S. (Determination)”: “The African diaspora represents strength in numbers, a giant can’t slumber forever.”

Linking discontent and unrest in Harlem and Los Angeles to anticolonial revolution in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere, Black leaders in the United States have frequently looked to the anti-imperialist movements and antiracist rhetoric of the Muslim Third World for inspiration. In Black Star, Crescent Moon, Sohail Daulatzai maps the rich, shared history between Black Muslims, Black radicals, and the Muslim Third World, showing how Black artists and activists imagined themselves not as national minorities but as part of a global majority, connected to larger communities of resistance. Daulatzai traces these interactions and alliances from the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power era to the “War on Terror,” placing them within a broader framework of American imperialism, Black identity, and the global nature of white oppression.

From Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali to contemporary artists and activists like Rakim and Mos Def, Black Star, Crescent Moon reveals how Muslim resistance to imperialism came to occupy a central position within the Black radical imagination, offering a new perspective on the political and cultural history of Black internationalism from the 1950s to the present.

Sohail Daulatzai is associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is coeditor of Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic.

Timely and provocative, this globe-trotting book takes you down an almost forgotten road of Black freedom: the one that connects the struggles of the burning ghettos of America to the rage against imperial power in Muslim lands. Shining light on the artists and activists who helped pave that road, Black Star, Crescent Moon vividly shows that Black freedom struggles, whether through art or politics, are always global in scope. Written with an urgency that our times demand, my man Sohail does what we in hip-hop have been doing for decades: uncovering histories, drawing connections, and trying to make people move. Rebel reading for right now!

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Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def)

Sohail Daulatzai’s Black Star, Crescent Moon is a pathbreaking, genre-shattering work of breathtaking scholarship. It is a work of poetic verve and brilliant analysis that will forever change how we view the international implications and global sites of black freedom struggles.

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Michael Eric Dyson

Black Star, Crescent Moon is a tour de force that has restored my faith in cultural studies. The book is a stunning achievement and Daulatzai reveals an intellectual virtuosity and originality few can match. His formulation of a ‘Muslim International’ alone compels us to rethink Muslim Third World opposition and its relationship to the black freedom struggle.

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Robin D. G. Kelley

Through thoughtful and poignant investigation, Daulatzai highlights the shared, "radical imagination" between black Muslims and radicals and the "Muslim Third World."

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The Root

Daulatzai’s argument concerning the wholesale framing of Muslims and African Americans as noncitizens and criminals is as urgent as it is compelling.

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American Studies Journal

Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom Beyond America frames the black freedom movement in an international context, deeply linked with what he terms the Muslim Third World.

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The Nation

Powerfully original, Black Star, Crescent Moon stands not only as a significant work of media and cultural studies but also holds interdisciplinary resonance.

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Sociology of Islam

Daulatzai’s book succeeds in bringing attention, in a rather provocative way, to certain aspects of American and Islamic culture that are often ignore.

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Contemporary Islam

Black Star, Crescent Moon offers a powerful cultural history of black radical thought that cuts through the problematic framing of Malcolm X as ultimately choosing integration over segregation.

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American Studies Journal

Contents

Introduction: An Empire State of Mind

1. “You Remember Dien Bien Phu!”: Malcolm X and the Third World Rising

2. To the East, Blackwards: Black Power, Radical Cinema, and the Muslim Third World

3. Return of the Mecca: Public Enemies, Reaganism, and the Birth of Hip-Hop

4. “Ghost in the House”: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of the “Green Menace”

Body and SoulThe Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination
The legacy of the Black Panther Party’s commitment to community health care, a central aspect of its fight for social justice

Samurai among PanthersRichard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life
The first biography of Asian American activist and Black Panther Party member Richard Aoki

Racism
An eminent social analyst examines the way racism works--and how it can be overcome.

Dispatches from the Arab SpringUnderstanding the New Middle East
An urgent and engaged exploration of the revolutionary wave sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East

Escape from New YorkThe New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem
Resituating the Harlem Renaissance—and the New Negro movement—in broader global political and cultural currents

Filipinos RepresentDJs, Racial Authenticity, and the Hip-hop Nation
What does it mean when Filipino youth lay claim to an art form associated with African Americans?

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Sohail Daulatzai's book "clearly demonstrate[s] that the Muslim International is an intellectual tradition and cultural space, if not network, within which American Black Muslim intellectuals, activists, writers, and artists have located themselves politically since World War Two."